Magnetic Nature

So many changes have come in the past couple of years that have brought us closer to nature, in our bodies that is raw foods, and now another one of our skins is being pulled to nature (artist Hudertwasser says man has five skins, the third skin is man´s house). Universe wants us to start building a house made of natural materials in the mexican desert. We are seeing into building it out of Cob, which is a mixture of clay, sand and hay, it will be of mostly natural and recycled materials and will mostly be built by us.

So far we have dug the trenches for the foundation all around. Having started the earth calls us to do it. For now we can go on the weekends only, but Eduardo has vacations this month and we are looking to spending more time in this project. I envision the house being done in aproximately 6 months and after that living there part time, half the week there, half the week in the city until we transition our activity to being there full time.

I feel that this house is gonna be very very special and peaceful, not to mention healthy, nice unpolluted air and water, open space, gardening and spiritual practice, a great place for meditation.

So healthy takes us to build a healthy living space ourselves!

For more about natural building I am enjoying the folowing websites:
http://www.mudgirls.ca/
http://small-scale.net/yearofmud/
http://www.barefootbuilder.com/

and many others! books have been ordered and I will also rely on the experience of the people who have built there, with adobe, and do a couple of smaller projects to test the materials in its environment before building up the walls.

This is moving moving moving beautifully like a dance.

Raw Spirit Love

Last week Eduardo and I attended the Raw Spirit Festival, this event is in a few words sort of like coming home! We enjoyed it very much, I loved being back in that place, the red rocks, the nature around Sedona. This time around I was looking forward to meeting so many people from online networks, the twitterers, the facebookers, the juicefeasters, the give it to me rawsies, the raw fuists, the crazy sexy cowgirls... ohhh I rely on the online community waaaay too much! But it was amazing to see them, as many as in those few days together could possibly crash into each other. Recconecting with people we met last year was very nice.

In fact the festival started on wednesday for us, as we drove up to Austin to take our planes there on thursday morning, we were hosted by Jan and the lovely Heather for the night and it turned into a raw feast, it was so much fun and so yummy to share time with these two, I'm glad I will get to see much more of them in the near future.

Thursday presented a couple of obstacles along the way, but nothing can stop us from loving the experience. We got to meet Glenn on the shuttle to Sedona, Glenn lives in Florida and has amazing energy that represents to me what life is all about: blessings, adventure, kindness, flow and fun... what an awsome spirit and great attitude. I am so happy to have met you Glenn. You are our Brother truly.
We went to have late-lunch/early-dinner at the Bliss Cafe, then a beautiful swarm of twittering butterflies came in! All these ladies are so pretty in person, I know them from the sharing of our everyday lives on twitter and other networks, feeling their energy in person and hearing their voices and looking into their eyes, that is very different, I love that I now have great reference to go back to when we interact online...
The evening was perfectly set up to take us to the party at Kevin Gianni's place, it was an amazing gathering where I got to meet many other friendlies, Wendi Dee and Rawbin were there, Dea, Dawn, the nonstop Revvell and other kindred spirits like Victoria NievaGomez and her husband Augusto who I will soon be meeting again when the wind takes me back to California in a couple of weeks. Kevin and Anne Marie are really amazing people who are amazingly busy on a mission. Among others in the party were Mike Adams the Health Ranger and Matt Monarch.
The next morning the cosmos wanted me to go on a hike with Rawbin and WendiDee, so we met by chance and went to a feminine vortex park place, the nature in Sedona is so beautiful and I love that I got to share it with these wonderful women, that I got to know them a little more. They are both driven and fun and gentle people. I am grateful for the time we got to spend there.
The day at the festival was so much for just one day. We got to re-meet Suki (who will be stopping by Mexico on her Living Road tour yeeeeyyy!!), Narda, Alex, Joe Kennedy, and so many others and meet Joel, Shea, David and Katrina and Kristy AAAAAHHHHHHH and so many I am probably not recalling at this moment.
Saturday the dance went on, the lectures and demos and sharing were very good yes, we loved yoga and meditation with Dr. Gabriel Cousens, and the talks by Kriss Carr and others were amazing, it is still the people who are the highlight of this event. Like the Torres family and Anthony with all his purposeful work. Love is all over this festival.
Sunday was full of information, I mean Medicine Wolf, David Wolfe, Gabriel Cousens, Viktoras Kulvinskas, David and Katrina Rainoshek, Suki and Shea, Katrina Blair.... oooh this day went by fast!! And it ended in fun. Always fun.

Yet something was different this year. I had a lot of fun, but I was also more grounded than last year. I also felt happy to come home, I see this as some sort of growth, it is great that i also have so much beauty to come back to at home.

And that is no time soon, I am currently with my family in Spain, having a very good time of which I will write about soon.

The next raw move feels like it should be one of those hawaii retreats. It feels right. Santa Barbara feels like so soon right now, but maybe as it gets closer!

Illustrated Story

So I wrote up a brief story of my transformation. I will make it even briefer for this blog post.

The north-mex diet is mostly meats, cold meats, cheeses, flour tortillas, eggs, and breads; fruits and veggies come mostly in the form of salsas and sweet jams. My personal preferences were of sweets, cake and cookies.

I became athletic as a teenager and I ate a LOT, and that means a LOT of junk. I could eat one big sandwich, cookies, chips and soda as a midmorning snack, after breakfast and before lunch.

I left for college, I stopped all phisical activity but kept eating the same way…eek.

I became a vegetarian at age 24, finding this was easy for me as there is no meat in cookies. At 25 I threw my back out and was in bed for 3 weeks and chose to start working from home. I was sad. :(

Age 29 stumbled upon the Master Cleanse in hopes of happiness. So we both did it. And yes one feels lighter and clarity flows easier when one does something like that. I lost the lower back pain on the second day and lost about a pound for each of the ten days. I felt great, a little dizziness here and there but other than that no problems. This cleanse advices a raw vegan diet after it and I had time to research that further… hmmm does sound good this raw foods thing. Must try, I was already trying vegan eating before that, more like trying to find loopholes like vegan cookies and cakes.

My first bribe into raw foods was Ani Phyo´s donut holes, as soon as I ate that I knew I could leave refined flour and refined sugar behind FOR EVER.

The weight kept coming off easily, every day became exciting and interesting. I connected online with a lot of kindred spirits and I reconnected for real with many old friends. I started keeping a blog in spanish as there is not much information in my language about this lifestyle and I just wanted to share! We started having friends over for dinner a lot, this is fun, but even though people find it interesting, there not as much joining the club as I had hoped ;) This is why it was an obvious choice to go to the Raw Spirit Festival, we craved community, we craved the vibration of our tribe, and this event totally delivered that and more. I loved every minute of cacao high, love high and amazing food high, the information, the people, books and the happiness that could be breathed in.

One of the books bought there was Victoria Boutenko´s 12 Steps to Raw Foods. This book has some advice for people looking for community. It said teach a class. And this has worked better to find people highly interested in raw foods and in being at least hi-raw. I get to learn a lot in these classes and people respond well to the food. This also keeps me researching and experimenting more into this lifestyle trying new things to share.

One of those amazing experiments of health was the 92 day JuiceFeast. I had read about Angela Stokes´s juicefeast, found it admirable but pretty out there. Then all of a sudden it started popping out everywhere, Terilyn, Philip, Heidi… interesting. A whole event around it. I can´t really say I jumped into the wagon because of these reasons. In January I had a miscarriage. This would have been a terrible thing even one year earlier, but I felt rather levelheaded and in the present, I know I owe this balanced non dramatic response to the health and strength I got from raw foods. But the JuiceFeast came up in the perfect moment when I wanted to regenerate my cells, heal my body as much as possible before conception. It made sense and we jumped in then and there. It was an amazing experience of healing emotions. There is no reactive eating of the dates and almonds. I wasn´t much aware that I did this before. So it was a big experience of growth and awareness.

My current personal work is to heal the mind. And it is a fine interesting work to do.


















So these are my most extreme pictures. One is just before I started my transformation journey. I call this my lowest point picture, I dislike it very much, there is no energy in my face it looks like I rather be asleep or somewhere else. The second picture is a couple of weeks after the JuiceFeast, a totally different place in my life, very energetic and very aware of my body and what it needs to thrive.

From Juicy to Healthy!

So Eduardo has been out of town for 3 weeks now, he went to a composition Encounter in Spain, then he spent a couple of weeks with my dad near Sevilla, then he moved on to another workshop in Doncaster, close to Manchester, where I presume he is now. Raw and travel has always been interesting to me, it is always and adventure trying to figure out the next meal. It will be very interesting to share his experience when he comes back. I assume Spain is easier than the UK, but he will be a better narrator to that sometime next week.

So what is a girl to do in the summer in the absence of her other half??? hmmmm actually I have felt pretty whole, I love that. I have had a house full of visiting cousins and plenty to do. Last week I went to the desert and had an amazing experience that reminds me that there is only so much health that raw foods can give us. A lot of our (my) health has to do with mind and heart. Or maybe it is the next step in the journey, to start to heal more subtle energies, which seem to need a special, different kind of healing. The work I did there is all about minding my thoughts. This place is called "The Mistery" and the people who live there are deep into the yoga and meditation lifestyle, many people go there to heal so they have so much experience understanding people and their energy, they are very sensitive. So I felt very aware of my thoughts all the time, that´s probably part of my healing, but I did also feel self-conscious and troubled by the restlessness of my mind. I found many of my thoughts to be very childish, I have much work to do. But also I found this all to be very freeing, like I could from that moment on just let myself be softer.

I noticed that all the accumulated knowledge had made me be tough on myself, trying to be affirmative and accepting of what comes has to be based on further practices, not just theory. My body is detoxed enough, now I need to make it strong and flexible. I need my mind to be focused and clutter-free. I am now flowing into a softer space, where awareness of my weaknesses is more important than just longing for more enlightened states but not taking them to practice. I was told I need to work on anger and agressiveness issues.... whaaa??? meeee???? no waaay!!!! well I was made to see this up front and I found that I do have an edge, I tend to sarcasm and other uglies. I didn´t see that before. Just being aware of it is a big step in working through it. I have some sadness to work through too (wow this post is suddenly feeling heavy with too much info). But it is true, and I feel obliged to truth now, it is so much easier to just be softer and flow. I came back from this retreat feeling my heart so open and abundant with love.

I have been doing a lot for the healing of my body, now I also start the healing of my energy and of my heart. After all I think I had never before stopped to see why did I gain all the weight in the first place? What was I hiding from under all that toxicity? What have I been hiding from behind the labels "smart and spiritual" (with no further practice than that of my nutrition)? And I don´t mean to be analytic of my past, but instead just aware of what arises in the present... what triggers cause me to act out, with food or otherwise? I am back to being an explorer, a scientist of me with a lighter heart and a flowing disposition to be real.

Day 93 BREAKFEAST

Our breakfeast in Chipinque after some walking and foraging!
We are back to eating solids.... ahhhh they taste good too!

Day 83

Day 83 is going fine! I am having a relaxed day and am enjoying it. It is quite a warm afternoon in the north of México, it has been a warm week... yet Eduardo and I haven´t felt it as much as the rest, I think it is because of slower metabolism due to just juicing. I´m glad because I really really prefer not to turn on the AC... ever... which is odd given where I live, also interesting I don´t like cold water for drinking either.

Anyway, the last few days I myself have been running hot an cold I have had days of just wanting to start eating, knowing that I won´t- having come so far in the journey, and some days of being just plain happy about juicing and not picturing myself eating solids anytime soon. Pendular, pendular it goes around here lately.

I feel kind of guilty of not making the most these 92 days, having not medidated, not done chanca piedra and other such things. I don´t know if/when I will do this again for this long and I have a little naggy feeling that I could have done better. I have done some yoga, some walking, lots of wanting to buy a rebounder soon.

Then I cut myself some slack, I have juiced A LOT. I was making sandwiches for a friend yesterday and I made a pretty high stack of tomato slices, cucumber, spinach, sprouts and sunflowerseed cheese, avocado, a pretty wholesome big sandwich and all I could think is... "wow that is such a small amount of food, not even a whole tomato, only 5 spinach leaves?!?!" I mean one of my juices is one head of celery, one buch of cilantro, one pound of tomatoes, one whole cucumber, plus the basil and garlic... I have juiced a LOT of food, every day. The fruit plate on my table holds quite an amouunt of varied beauties, pineapple and mango, and canteloupe, kiwis, apples, citrus and it is just enough for two or three days. I have been a good juicer, a good juicefeaster. I can see how some of it is just nonsense in my head.

I haven´t weighed in for a few weeks, but I do know I had to punch an extra hole in my belt to hold my jeans up. I feel great weight-wise so I guess I don´t check in anymore.

83 x 120/365=27.2... this means I am reverting the damage done in 27 years by now... almost reborn!

Day 74

This is the painting I finished last week, I had a nice juicy and creative flow with this one and I enjoyed it a lot. Right now I have commissions for 4 more (for just one house!!) and 2 more pending... ahhhh to be flowing is so great!

The juicing is going great, I have been drinking less than 4 qts, but it has been totally fine, I didn´t weigh in this week but I feel I haven´t lost much weight in the last week, I feel just stable and level and ok. I have been loving orange+peach juice, Eduardo is loving it too. And yesterday I made a celery+galric+ginger+lemon juice so savory and tasty and when I do it again today I will use less garlic.

Loving this. day 74 already. Already having fantasies of all the gorgeous salads that I will eat after the feast, I made the decision to stop eating nuts regularly at least, maybe for parties or weekends, but definetely not daily anymore. After the feast, nuts only rarely, and seeds, well flax and hemp mostly and sunflower and pumpkin scarcely too. I will be fresh!

Day 60 was creative

So this juicing thing actually gives me time to focus a lot on painting which is one amazing job!!! I am enjoying the energy so much! And I can get a lot done in one day, so this weekend I will deliver this painting I am working on, it is ten feet wide and I am loving the process. I will make sure to upload the whole thing when it is finished. I usually don´t do much figurative stuff, but this one I am loving intensely!

Today only 2 quarts of juice though.
Must.Drink.More.Juice.

Day 54 + the coolest class! (no heat involved)

I had an amazing experience teaching my first Raw Foods class this past saturday, I loved it.
A long time ago I took a Quiromancy class (how to read the hands) and it turns out I have rare marks in the form of a stick figure person on both hands, the teacher said those are educator or teacher marks, I found that so odd because teaching has never been my thing, I don´t like public speaking so much, one on one speaking I love, but to more than one, not so much. So It feels good to have figured out those lines in my hands! I can teach raw foods! Every ingredient gave me a story to tell; cayenne pepper, nutmeg, mushrooms, garlic, avocado, I was so excited to share all this info gathered in the past year, of course stuff about enzymes and alkaline/acid balance.

Carrots is the name of the little health store where the class was held, it is a great place and they hold lots of healthy cooking classes, so now we are also sharing the option of not cooking, just healthy eating! The people who came to the class were mostly vegetarians, or close to that, so already health conscious and very knowledgeable, my friend Ben says I´m a next level facilitator. And It all rolled easily. I fact I am very happy that two of the attendants contacted me later interested in juice feasting! This was such a pleasant surprise!

I chose simple recipes that I had tried before and loved because since I am juice feasting I wouldn´t be able to test and taste there. Instead of a salad we made jamaican style kebabs, an avocado/celery soup with a chipotle swirl, then marinated portobello steaks with white mushroom gravy (this recipe I loved so much we had it at my sister´s wedding last year) and a black cherry cobbler for dessert. All turned out great. Or so I heard.

My friend Ana helped me so much, she is transitioning and eats raw vegan all week and though she still gives herself the weekends off, little by little is walking away from weekend meats, I´m so proud of her! In fact 3 of the people in the class own a vitamix, one of them even a dehydrator, I have found my community which is what it is all about! Seriously non of them looked the least bit shocked about the 92 day juicing thing opposed to the Average Juan around this premises.

It´s a great feeling, I can´t wait for the next one scheduled for next month!

Day 39

Wow tomorrow will be day 40!!! I honestly never thought I had it in me to do something like this, for so long at least. One year ago we did the master cleanse for 10 days and this is very much NOT the same.

Most days I have struggled with having the whole gallon of juice, but I always feel better when I do.
The weather is getting very hot now a days, so we must always make a point to have ice to carry the juices around.
I have also been feeling different, definetely feeling younger and by now we have dropped a lot of weight, I started this with 74 kilos and now I am 67 kilos, (as of last week). That is the weight I was when I was 18 and very athletic. I have been slacking a little on the exercise only walking and doing yoga now and then... I feel that my progress would be greatly increased if I get that going well. My skin feels and looks better than when we started the juicefeast, And soooooooo much better than it was one year ago before I went raw.

I am also currently reading A New Earth, my little sis gave it to me on my birthday, and I am loving all the clarity it brings, Eckhart Tolle has a great gift to make all these profound truths so accesible and I am drinking up every word... and feeling joy in just being. I have been surounded by friends lately, and I used to be more on the hiding side just a few months ago, so I love this, my life, my energy has shifted to a nicer state of being. Some synchronicities are showing up so I follow up on them. Simple stuff like I got twice the prints I ordered for a poster for my first RawFood class I am giving, the printer made a mistake and they gave me the extra prints for free. Hey! maybe the Universe wants more rawfoodies among the north of Mexico! I also met a foodie who lives here at an event... this is huge for me to have some sense of community, today I contacted another family who eats raw around here and I am looking forward to meeting them soon! How cool is that?!?!?!

Well all for toay and promise to make this more often!

Juice, Emotions, Energy and Detox

Days 5 through 10 of this trip have been very interesting. I have had several days of detox, almost all in the form of runny nose, and I have had to brush my teeth more times a day, it appears that we detox a lot through the mouth. Helping this detoxification with dry brushing and this is followed by contrast showers, also to stimulate the lymphatic drainage. I hoped to be able to sleep less time but so far has not been the case, in fact I think we need more sleep, my body is asking me for more sleep and I listen.

Yesterday we weighed in, we will do this every week to have a record of the fluctuations that we could experience, Eduardo dropped 2 kilos and I got off 3 kilos.

As for the emotions, has been different every day, I had a couple of days that I feel I want my nuts!, lol, it is strange, and although I have been eating infinitely better than a year ago .... Also there are ways to be bad rawfoodist. And I realize that I have a tendency to eat emotionally, and I continue to attract fats and sweets. While being raw, these elements are of much greater quality, perhaps I was using them in quantities not desirable. Now I feel and understand that fruits and vegetables should be the most significant portion of my diet. There are moments in the day that I have an incredible energy and I can not help stop what I am doing and just jump, so, some music and jumping for a good while.

I realized that days that I have not felt very well have been the day that I managed not take the proper amount of 4 liters is required to be a FEAST instead of a fast. My main goal for this week is to each day drink 4 liters of juice, maybe more, never less.

I realized that I was less drawn by chard for some reason, I am looking to use other green leaves, perhaps has been too much chard (red and green) for a week and I need green leaves that have less flavor. Except parsley ... I have been enjoying it a lot with pineapple, orange and generally juices of acid flavor.

We have been very good in terms of celery ... a head of celery per person per day!

Today I woke up with a lot of energy and because the weather is perfect I want to get out for a while, get some sun and exercise.

Up till now the menu is:
1 lt water with 1 tbsp of MSM and juice of 1 / 2 lemon
1 lt apple-carrot-spinach + a little orange / cinnamon / ginger
1 lt jícama-celery-cucumber-coconut water + a bit of lemon
1 / 2 grapefruit lt ........ I love grapefruit with great passion

And I am about to prepare for the afternoon a huge pineapple-parsley-cherries.

PEACE!

Thinking of Jasmuheen

I am so glad I found this. It is day six of juicing, and this is the most subtle form of feeding myself that I have practiced so far. And that reminded me of Jasmuheen, and then I found these vids from the festiva. How much grace is in your life? How much magic and love?

Day 1-5

I should really post every day so I don´t forget stuff.
So far it´s been ok. I thought I would be doing fine on the salt flushes, having done the master cleanse before, but I´m not liking it very much for this, maybe I just need to drink lots more water too other than the quart with MSM and lemon in the morning. Anyway, it didn´t feel right to salt flush yesterday so I skipped it... and it was not the best day, I totally needed the extra elimination.
So I went looking for enema kits and couldn´t find any!! So today I did salt flush again (because yerterday sucked without one) but I will call everywhere until I find an enema kit and start tomorrow 10 days of enemas, or as needed.
I think they will be less harsh on my body than the flushes.
Eduardo has done no salt flush yesterday and today.
So tomorrow, hopefully enema kits will be here.
I´m very happy about going to the "mercado" I usually go to supermarkets, but the juicefeast has made me look for options because of the amount of produce needed.
Yesterday I got:
2 pineapples
2 canteloupes
2 small watermelons very sweet
2 lb grapes
5 lb apples
2 trays of strawberries
+ the fruit guy gifted me a pint of orange/grapefruit juice!!
TOTAL 17 USD

I got all our greens organic
rainbow chard
purlple lettuce
carrots
green chard
cilantro
spinach
arugula
+ the greens lady gifted me all the curly parsley I wanted. I took 5 bunches

Total: 15 USD

Plus, my in-laws picked a whole lot of oranges and grapefruit (the juiciest grafruit) for us from this ranch they visited on the weeekend!!!

So the kitchen is stocked up. We are feeling very well (except for last night) and I am looking forward to the enemas.
I finally blogged some too!